1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to online games. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for creating online games using data sets that are decoupled from the online games.
2. Related Art
Educational games may be developed to encourage and aid learning in a variety of subjects for both children and adults. For example, an educational game may allow a user to learn and/or memorize facts, spelling, and/or vocabulary; develop logical thinking and/or analytical skills; and/or practice typing, language comprehension, and/or listening to music. Such educational games are commonly available online to enable access to the educational games by a large number of users.
In addition, educational games may be customized to facilitate learning by players of the education games. For example, multiple games may be configured to help the players learn state names and state capitals. Such games may include matching games that prompt the players to match face-up or face-down “cards” containing state names and state capitals to one another, flash card games that show a value from one category (e.g., state names) on one side of a card and the corresponding value from the other category (e.g., state capitals) on the other side of the card, and/or word search games that have values from one category (e.g., state capitals) hidden in a grid of letters and values from the other category (e.g., state names) as clues to the hidden words.
However, online educational games are typically developed for use with specific sets of data. As a result, creation of an online educational game may require manual input of data used with the educational game and limit reuse of the data with other educational games. For example, a game creator may provide a set of country names and a set of capital city names during the creation of one or more online games that allow users to match countries with capital cities of the countries. The game creator and/or another game creator may then be required to re-enter the same information during the creation of another online game that prompts the users to identify both the continent on which a country is located and the country's capital city. Moreover, changes to the countries of the world and/or the capital cities of the countries may not be reflected in the online games unless the game creator individually updates the data sets of both online games with the changes.
Consequently, creation and update of online and/or educational games may be facilitated by mechanisms for improving and streamlining the use of data with the online and/or educational games.